2017-03-26 - 7:57 a.m.

It's been a very busy two weeks and I am happy to have this morning free to relax a bit and then clean house.

REMINDER IF IT SAY IT OVER AND OVER I WILL NOT FORGET: EDIT WEB PAGE BANNER
(And if I write it a place I will SEE IT , or PLACES OVER AND OVER, not in ONE spot that I won't see as I then go to work when they call me in and COMPLETELY forget which is what happened yesterday...)

I dropped the ball on editing the theater group's web site banner to indicate that On Line Tickets are closed a couple of hours before the show. That is VERY important to get up so it is not absolutely a confusing mess for the Treasurer to work out while she is sitting at the box office handling live sales. Nothing worse than people who come in and say they just bought tix on line at last moment when she hasn't had time to SEE that and be aware of it!

So the fix is to update the site REAL TIME just two hours before the show. GREAT IDEA

BUT MY MISTAKE was saying I would be the one to do it.

It make's SENSE for me to the one (I figured I could do that easily OR delegate.... but I tried to ask the other marketing volunteers if any could do it and did not get a yes from any. CE LA VIE Figured NO PROBLEM)

Well, the problem was
I was going to go into all the details but that is just silly

Problem was ME!

I have executive functioning challenges known to be classic pronounced ADHD concerns, attentiveness issues, get in flow and work and lose track of time... etc...etc.... combination of which resulted in me dropping the ball on that.

Not a crisis.

We did also happen to go into production with a system at work in which I was the final end user tester that SAME week. I also happened to have to take on some responsibility at last moment due to a storm of work factors. Did well I thought. However of course something didn't work.
There is always a need for someone to blame.

At work things have been going very well overall. The other issue I think I have in addition to managing my limitations and mitigating my own personal challenges however is that when I drop the ball I am accountable and quick to admit it.

I know this has been a problem in the past, but I was reminded just this past week that some find it easy to leverage that and then avoid responsibly. (In other word I am the fall guy).

The reason I LOVE WORKING where I do , and so enjoy the volunteer work I do is that UNTIL LAST FRI neither environment has been a culture of blame. BOTH are a culture of high performance, doing your best, supporting each other and being appreciative of efforts OVERALL.

At work they tend to group together to just fix anything that goes wrong with a move forward attitude and then try to learn from the past mistakes.

I was therefore not too upset, just a little, when there was something at work that went wrong and in my efforts to fix it...

Well something else then went wrong....

AND I had not made my decision to act in making the fix independently (NO WOULD NEVER DO THAT I CURB that natural inclination!!!) And YES the choice made was actually the RIGHT CALL after consulting with a senior person then in charge.
In this case the mistake on MY part I take accountability of was that in collaboration three of us decided how to handle it and I listened to the senior person in the org who advised NOT to send out an e-mail to the whole damn distro ( At work we get EPIC CC Lists... its hilarious in a way.... I mean much larger than I was ever used to seeing at the Telecom I worked at. Its a work culture thing)

Mistake was the person who said DO NOT send this info out on FRI

THEN on WED, #1 acted like she didn't have involvement in that judgment call
#2 Let me SOLELY take accountability ( which frankly I never mind doing for my direct BOSS as at some level I think that we have a teamwork and its OK to sometimes INTENTIONALLY do that for little things.) and
#3 Said something directly contradictory to her decision saying should always be handled the opposite way of what I did (As in NEVER take an action on a system without communication to ALL it could impact. Her first decision I followed was, "This will have no impact so we need't let everyone know")

Well that judgment call was in error! GOOD NEWS I fixed a gap so a important data point which would have been missing was then to be included on a report!

BAD NEWS
The report was COMPLETED before my fix! It was sent around 10AM and I completed the fix around 1PM On MON! ( AND it seemed the senior person I talked with did not realize the work I was doing was FIXING that missing data point. I knew it COULD IMPACT, I THOUGHT she knew it and this is where it gets a bit odd for me in trusting her... I mean did she NOT really get that? OR did she WANT the thing to not work? OR was she motivated by PRIDE that to send out the e-mail of my identifying a problem and mitigating it was too much of a RISK as then some would want to know the source of the problem? NOTE it was someone else's error that we were fixing and not even an error on that particular person's part but more like a management poor judgment call of piling on responsibility after responsibility and having too much on the plate of one person so something was UNDONE! It is the actual problem our Agile coach talks of BOTTLENECKS when knowledge is too centralized and not shared. Something happens and then the person not available and no one else knows what the hell they have been doing and what they have undone that needs picking up. YEAH that happened and that SHOULD NOT happen in an Agile project in the ideal envisioned world of Agile.)

The senior person who I spoke with about this concern and who I told the fix I saw who advised not to tell the whole world at about 8AM MON morn but DO fix the error, did not agree with me when I said I thought they should not run the report. There would have been ALOT Of people freaked out if they got an email to hold off...
and she said it would have no impact (as she THOUGHT the data I was fixing was not on the report I presume? I had NO IDEA frankly what was on the report as I don't work with those but I PRESUMED that if you are missing data you don't run a report until it is all there! That is just common sense to me) I fixed SEVEN overlooked data points. ONE ended up on the report.

Now the worst part about this was that for some reason after a meeting on FRI I was cut out of a bunch of meetings I have been going to . ( Fall guy here?) Ironic as that Friday meeting DID have impact as at THAT Meeting I shared apparently too much info! So after that , when I shared info of an issue and then there were follow up questions and criticism I think I was TOO Transparent... and concern that I would SAY TOO MUCH and let some know we were still FIXING things... well then I was suddenly receiving some cancellation notices of meetings I was formerly involved in. This seems odd to me. (Fall Guy Moment #1? Shoot the messenger of a problem?)

Had I been at those meetings I would have known the data point missing and that there was a team of people trying to trouble shoot.

The thing is, the senior person I would think DID KNOW didn't recognize what caused the issue.

So it was WED when I came in and touched base with her First thing that I first heard what was going on , that the report run on MOn was WRONG.

It took me about a min of hearing of the problem to know why.

And she said the past day and a half they were all trying to solve it.

So I was blamed for not communicating.

(But it was her call and I deferred!) ON the Fri before I had communicated clearly about something and she told me I gave TOO MUCH information and was all freaked out by that.

So I learned a few things. Even very senior folks are not confident enough to at times take full accountably, OR They forget things TOO and it is a gut instinct in some to find someone to blame when having made one poor judgment call that has an impact.

The good news is I REALLY RESPECT AND LIKE THIS LADY who is truly talented, but like us all makes a mistake sometimes.

I also very much appreciate she later said she thought I did OK with our work (it was a busy week!) and validated I was appreciated and that it is expected that things happen sometimes.
Just a bummer that while I fixed actually seven data points, the fact the report was run PRIOR To my fix (since my fix was not shared with everyone and my advise to NOT run the report yet which I had articulated and which she said "OH NO its ok none of that is on it" was not heeded) is not known and acknowledged but it LOOKED to the rest of the group that I was one of those cowboys who thinks they are smarter than everyone else and goes and does shit they think will work independently without communicating and inevitably BREAKS something else and creates more trouble than they are worth having around.

Ironic as she told me of such an employee Fri who will no longer be with us.

I told her then THAT IS MY INSTINCT and my Personality but I curb it.

It is almost like I was set up in a scenario to have it LOOK like I did that, just serendipitously. I don't believe it was by design at all.

Fascinating.

But glad I am not paranoid and trust my team members!! I even told her it was rather prophetic our conversation on Fri when she explained that limitation in that employee and how when working in a LIVE ACTIVE CUSTOMER FACING SYSTEM

EVERY STEP is part of the PLAN and no one can ever deviate without communication and discussion as there are so many other moving parts impacted. So the thing to do is communicate and modify the plan and then document steps taken.

I get it.

So I very much appreciated her sorta apology. And I did have good conversation in which I reminded her of our conversation. She took accountability TO ME and that was enough. She said "If you ever have a gut feeling just push a little. Keep asking. If I don't see something I then might say one thing, but if I don't see something if you keep asking I will walk away and it will needle me and I will keep thinking about it and then I will look at it further (As I can't NOT)

I swear she has a similar personality in SOME ways to me and I like her much. Not good news as I think some can't STAND her much (HA HA)

I told her and my boss my biggest limitation is I am not good with politics at office . Not much different from my kids who also don't pick up on social nuances and sometimes can be TOO DIRECT, TOO HONEST.

I mean I just EXPECT to take everyone at face value as honest. I get the underlying psychology of most people with great clarity AFTER the interaction and have good insight of how I could have interacted differently.

I am a GREAT MANAGER of people because of that insight as in that role I sit back and observe. But when in a group I tend to get really focused on MY WORK and sometimes could miss the bigger picture in a highly focused moment. Its balancing the two which is critical.

And I think my tendency to be very honest and transparent is sometime exploited.

YEAH so the new system did not work.
OPPS I made a mistake and am seen as the one to have broken it.
CE LA VIE..
I know the reality and think it will all be OK and they are going to still have confidence in my ability.

I WAS allowed to keep touching the system! HA HA That is the good news. They did cut me out of meetings, but then when the NEXT THING discovered was broken I was the GO to person to input the fix.

Mainly cause no one else knows how to do that part as well as me. That also has to be mitigated. I have tried to communicate and offer myself as available to teach all I KNOW. I am not insecure that it would make me not valuable but rather understand that it is important to have good teamwork and collaboration and trust.

I just hope those values serve me both personally and professionally well.

And after learning that an Agile team of software developers were taking a day and a half , some likely working overnight (I am not even kidding or exaggerating here) to try to trouble shoot a problem and I was likely the fall guy

Well, I was a bit upset. But I tried to look at where I screwed up and it was

#1 NOT trusting my gut. I need to always know when I know something to be insistent and not be too quick to defer to the "authority". I WANTED them to hold of on the report I WANTED to send an e-mail to more than two people of the change we were making.
#2 ALWAYS FOLLOW the project plan and AMEND it as needed.

Its like she threw me a test.
And I failed at one part.

80% is not good enough in production environments.

Yeah I am a B student.

I honestly would be happy being the person putting some things in a system, but think I would NOT like to be the lead putting in DEALS for an Operations team. I LOVE contract management, and the work I do now which I won't go into detail about which I think is a GOOD FIT.

The thing is I was thrown into a role that someone else normally does , I had the knowledge because I am a quick study and figured out what was going on MON morning in a couple of hours. Seriously these were rules engines I never worked with before and I GOT it. I did save other missing data points. The mistakes that resulted in the errors I fixed WERE NOT Mine..

but nonetheless it could look like it.

CE LA VIE

So there was a team meeting and it is for employees only. I was invited but then the guilt of being on the clock and the company being billed for my time and HR and my agency drilling it in me that I am not to be paid for voluntarily attending anything that is not my actual work project is so irritating.
I mean when they have a party to celebrate success they have the caveat I am welcome but not on the company's dime.
They really need to improve that piece. ITs is shitty.

Good people will leave

They better on board the good people.
I just hope they see me as one and not the renegade cowboy wildfire risk....

The day of that work drama, after it was all fixed and worked (As the moment I identified why data was not there and told her they just have to re-run the report) I DID feel badly about MY MISTAKE. So what did I do? Did something well I could be proud of. I mastered VLOOK UP. I set this goal on MON that I was going to master it this week. We had data to analyze that I needed to use that for. My boss typically runs them and she has shown me what she does and taught me a lot, but I haven't USED IT enough to really get it down. This past week I sought the help I needed and took the time to practice and GOT IT DOWN! YES! So Wed after the awful day in which I felt like the fall guy, at 3pm I buckled down and used VLookup successfully writing the formulas to analyze some of our data to ensure accuracy and validate it.

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